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Tweets sent by the same person within a 4 hour time-window were used as samples of speed and direction. These samples were used to construct a vector field representing the average flow of people within the area. The vector field and total tweet density over the space were then used to simulate the movement of people. Particles, representing people, were released at locations where actual tweets were recorded and their subsequent movement was determined by the flow field. The particles start out blue and gradually change through purple to red over time so each trace shows the direction of movement. Locations where there is little movement will have blue dots or very short blue traces. Longer traces with more red show a greater speed at that point.
Movement in Manhattan based on tweets. Complement with some deliciously analog, subjective, hand-drawn maps of Manhattan.

Tweets sent by the same person within a 4 hour time-window were used as samples of speed and direction. These samples were used to construct a vector field representing the average flow of people within the area. The vector field and total tweet density over the space were then used to simulate the movement of people. Particles, representing people, were released at locations where actual tweets were recorded and their subsequent movement was determined by the flow field. The particles start out blue and gradually change through purple to red over time so each trace shows the direction of movement. Locations where there is little movement will have blue dots or very short blue traces. Longer traces with more red show a greater speed at that point.

Movement in Manhattan based on tweets. Complement with some deliciously analog, subjective, hand-drawn maps of Manhattan.

language maps media and communication data visualization cities New York Twitter

The Guardian data team maps the Twitter languages of NYC – best thing since mapping the dogs of NYC.

James Gleick media and communication culture and society Twitter libraries

This is an ocean of ephemera. A library of Babel. No one is under any illusions about the likely quality—seriousness, veracity, originality, wisdom—of any one tweet. The library will take the bad with the good: the rumors and lies, the prattle, puns, hoots, jeers, bluster, invective, bawdy probes, vile gossip, epigrams, anagrams, quips and jibes, hearsay and tittle-tattle, pleading, chicanery, jabbering, quibbling, block writing and ASCII art, self-promotion and humblebragging, grandiloquence and stultiloquence. New news every millisecond. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances. Now comical then tragical matters.

Call it what you will, the Twitter corpus now forms a piece of “the creative record of America” and therefore falls squarely within the library’s mission, says Robert Dizard Jr., the Deputy Librarian of Congress. Historians treasure nineteenth-century diaries; why not twenty-first-century tweets? “I think the twitter archive has the potential to allow researchers or scholars to paint a picture of the past with more colors or a fuller brushstroke.”

James Gleick, author of the indispensable The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, on what the Library of Congress’s acquisition of the Twitter archive means for the evolution of the cultural record.

maps culture and society resolutions Twitter data visualization psychology media and communication

Mapping New Year’s Resolutions based on tweets, color-coded for altruism vs. narcissism.

Compare and contrast with famous resolutions from Jonathan Swift, Marilyn Monroe, Susan Sontag, and Woody Guthrie.

flickr.com

Twitter culture and society documentary media and communication journalism

Fantastic new episode of PBS Off Book exploring the impact of Twitter on journalism.

Previous episodes have covered typography, product design, art in the age of the internet, book art and papercraft, generative art, the explosion of animated GIFs, LEGO art, the art of film and TV title design, the culture of Reddit, technologies that allow us to see beyond the human eye, logo design, and the art of motion graphics and animation.

science and technology Jack Dorsey Twitter

Inside Jack Dorsey’s notebook and his credo.

art and design posters Twitter design propaganda policy

WWIII Propaganda Posters by Brian Lane Winfield Moore, “inspired by the 2009 Iran election protest and activism and censorship therein.” More on Flickr.

(↬ Coudal)